Good Question!

[Published in the Cambodia Daily in late May or early June 2003.]

The International Republican Institute’s Mike Mitchell asks in your pages (May 27), “Can a government that fails to understand, let alone protect, the most basic political rights implement elections that are legitimate in the eyes of Cambodians and the world?”

The answer, of course, is “No”, so one hopes that Mr. Mitchell will get to work ensuring that the US government starts protecting basic rights in places like the Guantánamo concentration camp, Iraq, and Florida, to name only a few. Then the world might be spared a repetition of the grotesque anti-democratic farce of 2000 when the next US presidential election takes place.